Tuesday, October 28, 2014

I saw them last year, hesitated, and when I went back to
make my purchase, they were gone. So this year, when Costco resurrected them
for Halloween, I snatched one right up and loaded it into my cart.

I was so excited.
I've had a weird fascination with skeletons for a long time.

Think about it:

Skeletons are everywhere.

There's one sitting on my bed right now, leaning back
on a pillow, left leg bent with right leg crossed over it, holding a notebook
and writing with a pen! It's actually writing with a pen. Occasionally, it
turns its head and looks out the window.

Anyway, I took my new friend home in its box and stuck it in
a corner, thinking that August was a little too soon to decorate for Halloween.

I had one concern. I was worried that our two-year-old
grandson, Jack, would be afraid of a life-sized skeleton.The next time he came over for a visit, I
thought I'd ease into an introduction. How scary could a skeleton still in a
box be?

"Jack, Grammy has a new friend! Come see!" (Yes, I
refer to myself in third-person.)

I led him into the corner of the living room where the box
was stashed. There is a clear plastic section on the box for viewing the
content. Perhaps I should say for viewingthe eerily-grinning content. Jack took one look and began to cry. He
grabbed onto me tightly and hid his eyes on my legs. He was terrified.

Okay, I thought, world's worst grandmother right here.

Over the next couple of weeks, I tried to convince Jack that
it was a nice skeleton. Didn't work. He wouldn't go in the living room. Every
time he had to go even near that area of the house, his face clouded over.

Finally, I said,
"Should we cover Grammy's skeleton friend with a blanket?"

He thought this was a good idea. We threw a blanket over the
box. Jack got so that he'd peek around the corner to make sure the blanket was
still in place, but he didn't want to go in there.

Then one nice day in late August, Jack wanted to go over to my
neighbor Beth's front porch to sit on her red chairs. He loves to sit on Beth's
red chairs.

"Hey!" I said. "Maybe the skeleton would like
to sit on Beth's red chairs! Should we take him out of the box and take him to
Beth's?"

"Yes!" said Jack, and started pulling me towards
the living room. I could hardly believe it. I'm pretty sure Jack thought it was
a great idea to get the skeleton out of Grammy's house and over to Beth's. He
kept a bit of a distance as I removed the skeleton from the box.

I carried it out the front door and across the lawn to Beth's
front porch with Jack eagerly following along, repeating, "Nice!
Nice!"

Young neighbor children gathered around. They also have a
habit of hanging out on Beth's porch.She's got red chairs. Doesn't matter if she's home or not. We're there.

"This is my new friend," I told the kids as I posed
the skeleton in one of the chairs.

"What should we name him?"

After a
short discussion (and some odd suggestions) we decided on Bones.During this time, Jack had come quite close
and was actually touching the skeleton.

"Bone nice!" he exclaimed.

He sat on a chair with Bones and posed for a picture.

Next thing I knew, he wanted to take Bones back over to our
yard and put him in Grandpa's truck. He insisted on holding Bones's hand as we
walked. It felt a little weird, but I would soon get used to it. Over the next
weeks, I found myself walking all over the house, yard, and cul-de-sac,
carrying a life-sized skeleton, with my grandson holding its hand.

When Jack's parents took him to St. George for the weekend, I
was afraid he'd miss his new friend, so I took a few pictures and texted them
to my daughter so she could show them to Jack.

And I found out that Bones is pretty handy around the house.

Posing Bones and taking pictures became a really
entertaining activity. I began texting the pictures to our son Kurt who is in
Brazil ("Mom, please keep sending these.") and to our missionary son, Joel, who
is in Taiwan. Joel's been in Taiwan for a year and a half and had kind of
forgotten about Halloween.

" That's pretty funny about that skeleton and
Jack," Joel wrote in a letter. "At first I didn't realize it was a
Halloween decoration and I was trying to figure out why on earth Mom would buy
this life-sized skeleton so that made it even funnier."

Well, I'm afraid that Bones has become more than just a
Halloween decoration. He's more like a member of the family now. I don't know
how I'm going to put him back in his box and retire him to the attic at the end
of the week.

And I have some sad news. A few days ago, I posed Bones on the
front porch, leaning him up against a post, and I started doing a little yard
work. Suddenly I heard a crash. When I turned to look, I saw Bones sprawled
half in the flower bed and half on the front walk, and his head was rolling
away from his body. It was horrible. He had hit his head on a landscaping rock.
Fortunately there was no blood. But one of his arms had broken off, too.

I was afraid Jack might be disturbed, but he's not. He just carries around the broken arm or the severed head. And he still loves him.

And Jack is not the only friend Bones has. When Beth saw how good Bones looked on her front porch, she went out and bought her own skeleton.

Last night he came over to visit our poor ailing Bones.

His big night is coming up. I need to wire him back together and get him out on the front porch to greet the trick-or-treaters. Then it's back in the box until next year.

But I've decided that August is definitely not too early for Halloween decorations.